DISMANTLING THE STUMBLING BLOCKS THAT IMPEDE RESEARCHERS’ ACCESS TO E-RESOURCES

October 13, 2015

Roger C. Schonfeld @rschon rcs@ithaka.org

ITHAKA S+R

ITHAKA S+R

Broaden access to higher education, improve student outcomes, and control costs

Educational Transformation

Effective and sustainable systems for the creation, discovery, dissemination, and preservation of scholarship

Libraries & Scholarly Communication

LIBRARIES & SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION Effective and sustainable systems for the creation, discovery, dissemination, and preservation of scholarship

Strengthening Services & Spaces • The Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey and

The Ithaka S+R Library Survey

• Surveys of student and faculty member practices and needs at individual universities

• Collaborative examinations of research practices and support needs by field

• Anthropological consulting to improve support for research, teaching, and learning

Research Agenda • Discovery & Access

• Organizational structures

• The changing monograph

STUMBLING BLOCKS

OVERVIEW

» The library is not the starting point

» The campus is not the work location

» The proxy is not the answer

» The index is not complete

» The aggregator is not current

» The link resolver is not omniscient

» The PC is not the device

» User accounts are not well implemented

http://j.mp/Ithaka-Streamlining-Access

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

• Research practices are changing

• Your product is used inside the library’s systems environment

• Researchers and students face challenges accessing the materials libraries license

• Traffic is lost to open web sources – and perceived value of publisher resources suffers

• Open doesn’t solve all problems, but it addresses several effectively

ONE ILLUSTRATIVE CASE

WHAT TO DO?

COMPLEX ENVIRONMENT

» Society publisher (NAME)

» Publisher partner (Sage)

» Platform provider (HighWire)

» Aggregator (EBSCO)

» Alerting service (Google Scholar)

» Discovery service (Summon)

» Link resolver (Serials Solutions 360 Link)

» Proxy (EZProxy)

» Shibboleth authentication (InCommon)

» Library configurations (Syracuse)

» IT configurations (Syracuse)

DIRECTIONS

Off-campus and distance

Multiple institutional affiliations

Seamless use of mobile devices

FOUR TAKEAWAYS

» Understand use of your platforms and content in the academic library context

» Set expectations for how quickly content appears in discovery services and aggregators. Communicate this with link resolver knowledgebase partners

» Eliminate stand-alone mobile indices and interfaces

» Support a user account that allows you to better understand & serve researchers

THANK YOU

Reports and issue briefs: www.sr.ithaka.org

Roger C. Schonfeld rcs@ithaka.org @rschon

ITHAKA S+R